


more than a catalogue of non-definitive acts

by fab_ia



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Alcohol, Blood and Violence, Death, Gen, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Trans Male Character, bed sharing, discussions of fights, discussions of injury, dubious pining, i LIKE the trope of caring for each others injuries and i WILL shoehorn it in, inherent homoeroticism of wound tending, mentioned bar fight, nb character, offscreen death, slightly more graphic violence but i don't think enough to warrant a higher rating, tags will be updated along with the work, that isn't a major part of this though it's just something that i like, the fireworks scene was their first kiss Change My Mind
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:13:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 12,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26857255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fab_ia/pseuds/fab_ia
Summary: countless words define a human life, and there an infinite number of acts a person can perform - but how many of those truly matter in the grand scheme of things? how many of those acts truly manage to aid in defining an individual's existence?(work title is from richard siken's 'litany in which certain things are crossed out', found in 'crush.)
Relationships: Daniel Jacobi & Alana Maxwell, Daniel Jacobi & Warren Kepler, Daniel Jacobi & Warren Kepler & Alana Maxwell, Daniel Jacobi/Warren Kepler
Comments: 29
Kudos: 32





	1. Chapter 1

**i**

* * *

**“It starts with bloodshed, always bloodshed, always the same  
** **_running from something larger than yourself_ story  
shoving money into the jaws of a suitcase, cutting your hair  
with a steak knife at a rest stop,  
and you’re off, you’re on the run, a fugitive driving away from  
something shameful and half-remembered.” **

**\- Richard Siken, ‘Driving, Not Washing’, _Crush_ **

* * *

there is a fear instilled in every individual in the world of the unknown, of the thing that lurk beyond human understanding and knowledge. the beings that live in the dark corners, that make their homes in the shadows and take up these shrouded vantage-points to watch over the comings-and-goings of society. these overseers are faceless and monstrous and unknowable until the day they slip themselves into the everyday life of a person without anyone noticing.

this monster is called mr jacobi, or sir, or father. never dad, never by a first name, never anything less formal. he watches his family with a cold and steely gaze and an iron fist, its silvery surface marred with scarlet after one-two too many drinks and one-two-three too many comments from the middle child.

said child shelters in their bedroom, presses their back to the door and the back of their own hand underneath their nose. the bedroom is dark and only dimly lit from outside, a little of the artificial light coming through their still-open window and illuminating their haven in an almost-otherworldly orange glow.

already, the metallic taste has made it to their mouth, the back of their throat, thick and coating it with something they’ve grown all-too used to by now. their hand is red and there are spots on the front of their t-shirt too, which they’ll scrub out in the bathroom sink.

“pull yourself together, daniel,” he whispers into the stillness, because his own self is the one he cannot keep secrets from and this may be the biggest secret of all. his name is daniel and he is a _boy,_ no matter what people say. he's almost a man, come three more years of waiting and an out-of-state college acceptance. he sniffs once, and wipes his nose on the already-stained back of his hand (only really serving to smear blood across more of his face, not that it really matters) and plucks his shirt away from his chest a little as he changes into softer pants than the jeans that are already wearing through. he drops down onto his bed to the cacophony of protesting springs, smooths his hand over the sheets before he lays down and pulls them over himself.

“be strong,” he breathes, curling in on himself beneath the covers, breeze coming in through the window and barely even bothering him, barely even noticed. it brings with it the distant sound of a car, in the street a few blocks away. a siren. the occasional call of a bird he can’t put a name to and a little of the smell of rotting leaves, brought about by the turning of the season. late september, almost october, almost sixteen. almost, almost, almost. he could bet his life on almost.

“almost,” he thinks he tells himself, face mostly pressed against the pillow and carving the lines from it into his cheek as he draws the cover tighter around his curled-up form, cocooning himself in the promises he makes of his future. freedom and honesty and peace, for what any of that’s worth. for all he knows, they're just words, but they're a driving force and they're hope for now, which will have to be good enough.  
  


* * *

his father buys him a half-junk old car for his graduation and daniel smiles and accepts it readily, the hollow words of a promise to _be good_ still echoing in his mind three hours in when he pulls into a rest stop with a dirty mirror and hacks at the shoulder-length hair until he looks more like a delinquent than the respectable young woman he’d been cast as for eighteen years. he turns his face to the side, then to the other, and offers himself a grin. the mirror warps and distorts his face. he looks like his father. _he looks like his father._

daniel looks away from the mirror.

he ties the jacket ‘round his waist and shakes out his hair into the sink until he’s reasonably sure any loose strands are out (after he kicks most of what landed on the floor behind the sink) and he thinks he feels - different. lighter, somehow, but there’s still a weight of _something_ in his chest that aches a little, weighs on his gut and presses against his ribcage. breathing feels a little harder and daniel thinks that maybe, maybe something about him’s even more wrong now, but there’s no going back. can’t change the past, can only move on and learn, can only fuck up the future in some new and exciting way.

he stops again after another three hours in search of snacks, a bottle of water, and somewhere to piss, although not necessarily in that order. the guy - person? it’s a little hard to tell in the fluorescent lighting when he’s halfway across the store, but daniel’s reasonably sure that it’s a guy with weirdly dark eyelashes - at the register eyes him in a way daniel would probably categorise as wary. which is dumb, objectively, ‘cause he’s not gonna steal anything. half because there’s nothing worth stealing, half because he really doesn’t want to go to jail. or see cops. or get his _dad_ called on him. 

“hey,” daniel says when he sets his haul down for the guy to tally up the prices (this close he can see broad shoulders and the barest hint of facial hair on the guy’s chin, which solidifies his theory, because he’s still silent). “you know if there’s any really cheap motels near here where i can crash for the night?”

the guy pauses with daniel’s bag of cheetos in his hand and furrows his brow for a second, thinking. daniel takes the moment to study his face a little more. it’s not bad. the guy looks like he’s wearing makeup or something, but he manages to make the blacks work, makes them bring out features instead of making him look like a nightmarish version of a halloween clown.

“yeah,” he says. “about… a half hour away, i think. up the interstate.”

he has a nice voice. not quite the accent daniel had been expecting - a college student, he assumes, albeit a little older, and he's not quite sure why he cares so much about a stranger's life until he realises that this is his first chance to be seen as _himself_ , and that it matters to him what the strangers see.

“thanks, man,” daniel says, grinning. “don’t wanna pass out at the wheel before i ever even make it to college, y’know?”

stranger nods. daniel can’t see a nametag, and doesn’t ask for a name. better to remain the strange guy with one earring who gave him directions to a likely-infested motel for a night rather than strange-guy-with-a-name-who-told-him-where-to-go-to-get-eaten-by-bed-bugs. daniel offers him a wave on his way out of the store anyway, which the guy looks hilariously confused by, before he gets back into his piece-of-shit car and keeps driving as the sun sets. the sky is painted in all the colours of a fire, sinking into a deeper spectrum as time goes on. it’s beautiful, and the first time daniel really feels like he can appreciate it.

the motel sucks. the rest of the drive is fine. it’s entirely unremarkable. daniel sings along to the radio at the top of his lungs and can't stop smiling the whole way.

* * *

registration at mit ask his name and he slips into the lie he’s constructed to explain away the discrepancy on his application - empty words, he tells them with a plastered-on smile about how his brother had found it _really funny_ to change certain details on his form, like his name and sex, and the girl with the clipboard just… shrugs. 

“sure, dude,” she said. “i’m sure we can fix the room thing, but you might be in a co-ed dorm already, which is like…”

“no big deal,” daniel assures her, his smile suddenly real. “thanks. seriously, thank you.”

the girl looks at him a little warily. wasn’t he thanking her too much for some stunt a punk younger brother had pulled? but daniel just smiles and rocks back on his heels, duffel bag bumping his hip. he feels good.

* * *

daniel sings for his supper, sings a song of sixpence and spins a story worthy of scheherazade as he works, but everyone knows that a liar gets his comeuppance eventually. every liar is met with the kiss of hellfire, is tormented with brimstone and sulfuric fumes, and he’s no different.

the noise of it is enough to set his ears ringing, the flames leaving him flushed and sweating and all he can think is _no no no no no_ , because his partners are gone and he did it, he made a mistake, the fuse was wrong and ignited wrong and it’s all wrong, wrong wrong wrong. daniel spirals and sobs, something sharp and biting in his throat as he chokes his way through a fire escape and heaves in the late-april sun. he spits black onto the concrete and watches his hopes burn inside it.

“jacobi,” magellan says, six steps away from him with his eyes wide, “jacobi, what did you _do_?”

“i don’t know,” daniel lies, and doesn’t look up from the ground again. he curls his hands into fists and lets the pain from the bite of his nails leave him weightless and floating. 

because he gets fired. obviously. fired in so many ways, cut off and left to burn up the meagre savings he’s scrounged up over the years. severance pay is fine, is whatever, the board probably expect him to go crawling back up to wisconsin and beg to stay back in his parent’s basement, but daniel hasn’t spoken to his father since his twentieth birthday and his mother since he was seven-and-a-half, his siblings probably think he’s a fucking soviet spy or something, and he’s completely alone. he cries into his pillow and the ghosts of his partners are in the room with him telling him how its all his fault, how he’ll burn with them for this, how they’re there to drag him down and down and down with them.

he almost wishes they would.

he flees on a night that he remembers with a more familiar burn - his throat rubbed raw by the cheapest and strongest vodka he can find, probably only half-legal, choked down as he drives the fuck _out_ of ohio and south, to the sun, to somewhere else he can burn.

two years into self-flagellation a man gifts him with a square of cardboard with a number and a company name and it almost hurts to look at him - two pm on a thursday, daniel drunk and miserable and halfway to hell in a cradle made of booze-infused ice when the man offers him a hand, a way out of the hole that’s far more radiant than any way daniel’s ever looked for salvation before.

man is a selfish creature, above all.

daniel shakes his hand and signs a contract three weeks later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading! i'm doubt there'll be any sort of regular update schedule and i won't claim to have one, as this fic is something i'll be working on amidst uni work. you can find me on tumblr @sciencematter, and my writing on my blog here: https://knewtonn.blogspot.com/


	2. Chapter 2

**ii**

* * *

**“soon i became one  
with my public face, hid  
fragments in the small print  
of undergrowth, chastised  
them for not being whole”**

**\- Daisy Lafarge, ‘gaslit air’, _understudies for air_**

* * *

sometimes there are men that seem to bring the world around them alive when they walk into somewhere new, light and life and the promise of something _good_ seeping out of every single one of their pores. warren kepler, the indecipherable enigma that he is, seems to be the opposite, with every millimetre of him promising something _terrible_ should he ever be crossed.

it’s daniel’s opinion that he’s the most beautiful man he’s ever had the pleasure to meet, as well as being the most terrible he’s ever had the misfortune to cross paths with. he props his hand up on a fist and levels his gaze with kepler, watching his face for whatever miniscule flits of any real expression he can find there as the man stares out of the window to the street beyond.

people-watching, kepler insists, is a perfectly ordinary pastime that daniel only mocks because he doesn’t _understand_ , and daniel shudders at the thought of kepler’s eyes fixed on the unknowing people outside, who don’t understand the danger of being targeted by the carefully-hidden predator in its human disguise. he watches kepler’s eyes drawn to a couple on a bench across the road in a park, shoulders pressed together as they converse.

“are you going to drink your coffee at some point,” daniel says, because there’s no point phrasing it as a question. the likelihood is that kepler won’t even acknowledge the fact he spoke at all.

“have it if you want,” kepler sighs, one hand shifting in a subtle way daniel generally chooses to read as _i don’t give a single shit what you do_. “i don’t think you’ll like it.”

there’s probably alcohol in it. maybe daniel should care more about the implications of that, about what it means that his first assumption about his boss is that he poured a shot of liquor into _coffee,_ but he takes a sip anyway and promptly chokes on it.

“what _is_ that?”

“pumpkin spice latte.”

“huh?”

“pumpkin spice latte. it’s nice.”

“it’s just sugar.”

“mmhm. nice.”

 _what the fuck_ , daniel thinks. then, for good measure, “what the fuck?”

kepler grins, and keeps watching the public through the condensation-streaked glass.

* * *

“you cut your own hair,” daniel says one evening when the blood’s barely wiped off of his boots in their hotel room as he watches kepler in front of the bathroom mirror, door held open by a half-emptied-out duffel bag. kepler turns his head to give him a look for a few moments before turning back to the mirror, running his fingers through his hair. “why is this something i didn’t know before?”

“you didn’t ask,” kepler says, staring at his reflection. “it’s not like it’s a big thing, jacobi, i’m not secretly a hairdresser.”

“don’t you have a story about how you went undercover as a trainee for the hairdresser of the iranian ambassador?”

“i was undercover as an assistant to the _driver_ ,” kepler huffs. “careful you don’t get too many details wrong, jacobi, or i might think you don’t listen to me when i talk.”

“i don’t.”

kepler sighs. he leaves the bathroom and motions towards it, dropping down onto the other twin in the room. he leaves a smear of mud against the sheets, a souvenir that had been clinging to his pants from where he’d had to drag a target down into the grass with his hand wrapped around their throat. daniel thinks for a moment about the way the body had burned, and shivers as he locks the bathroom door behind him.

his shirt drops to the floor as he puts his half-folded clean clothes on top of the closed toilet, looking up to meet himself in the mirror. he maps his own body with the movement of his eyes, the seams where he’s been taken apart and put back together more times than he can count by now. daniel traces one mark, a line, across the side of his stomach that meets his navel. it’s still raised, still pink, not quite faded enough to fully call it a scar. it;’ still raised, and so he drags his nail over it, the bump softly sensitive beneath the jagged edge where he’s barely bitten off the torn edge.

he still looks like his father, even more so than he had before. daniel touches his jaw, fingertips against the line of it, the bone beneath soft skin and the other daniel does too, a warped imitation.

“huh,” he says, and turns the shower on.

* * *

  
  


knees spread wide where he sits on a chair - another pair of legs between them, pants dark and darker still in spots soaked through to skin - and arms out and up, cupping kepler’s face between rough palms. his cheeks are even rougher, sharp, and kepler scowls as daniel turns his face to catch more of it in the light, highlighting the bruising that’s blossoming up the left side and encircling his eye, a fairy ring of violets. he hisses when daniel’s finger presses against it, and daniel tuts, doesn’t bother playing off something deliberate as a careless mistake. there is, after all, no point in declaring a calculated move as a momentary slip.

“what did you do, get in a bar fight?”

kepler shrugs, tries to turn his face away as daniel tightens his grip. “let go.”

“answer the question.”

“insubordination.”

“not after work hours.”

and kepler gives in like he always does when he didn’t honestly want to protest in the first place, closes his eyes and lets daniel inspect the off-colour sections of his face to his heart's content. and daniel explores, finds a treasure trove of things he’s never noticed before, discovers a split lip and the hint of blood around kepler’s nose, light freckles and the suggestion of laugh lines at the corner of his eyes. marks on his skin that tell him, once upon a time, kepler had piercings.

“you’ll never be beautiful again,” daniel declares, face closer to kepler’s than it strictly needs to be. “sorry to be the bearer of bad news for you, but it’s a crime to shoot the messenger.”

kepler laughs. it’s soft, barely more than an exhale, a puff of air. “i wasn’t aware you ever thought i was beautiful,” he says without opening his eyes, the amusement in his tone evident. “i suppose there’s no way around it. i’m heartbroken. without my good looks, what am i even worth?”

“about ten dollars,” daniel breathes, smile playing across his lips. “seriously, kepler. what happened?”

does he deserve an explanation? likely not, because he’s prying where he doesn’t necessarily belong, and kepler’s under no obligation to tell daniel anything at all. still - he’s curious, and he knows the old saying, he knows that curiosity will be the death of him someday, so he’ll enjoy it while he can. 

kepler leans back in the chair he’s seated himself in, opening his eyes and blinking a few moments to readjust his vision to the light in the lounge of daniel’s apartment. his gaze rakes over jacobi’s face, doesn’t meet his eyes, doesn’t hold the contact.

“i,” kepler says, “got in a fight.”

“well, duh. why?”

“sometimes there isn’t a good reason for something, jacobi,” kepler says, faux-wise. “sometimes you just need to punch some guys in the face and try to break their noses.”

“it looks more like they punched _you_ in the face.”

kepler pauses. considers. “there’s hardly a point in having had a fight and coming away with nothing to show from it.”

“shit,” daniel breathes, “i guess so.”

* * *

  
  


he can’t help but rock back on his heels a little as kepler scans the paper he’s been handed, frowning a little as he reads the penned-in sections amidst the printed words. the red ink stands out, daniel supposes, clasping and unclasping his hands in front of him as the two of them wait in a heavy silence.

“you’re requesting… a week off,” kepler says slowly, brow furrowing as he stares at the page, as he reads over it again. “why?”

“i just…” daniel trails off. he didn’t expect kepler to _ask_ , didn’t expect him to care enough to pry into why he wants time off. “i just think that i might not be great at focusing that week. that’s all.”

kepler sighs. “i can give you the week after, but there’s already something marked on the calendar that day, jacobi.”

oh.

“oh.”

kepler sighs again, more genuine this time, and seems genuinely more than a little frustrated. “jacobi…”

daniel winces, like he always used to at the sound of his own surname after so long of going by _just daniel_ to anyone who asked. his surname feels like a brand, still, like a permanent mark of his mile-long list of fuck-ups and mistakes, like it’s something there’s no way for him to get away from. under kepler, for a month, the name _jacobi_ meant nausea and a shiver, a barely-suppressed plea for kepler to call him _anything_ but that.

“i’m sorry, sir,” daniel breathes. “i’ll do better. i’ll take that back and shred it.”

“i can do it,” kepler says. his voice is soft, almost gentle, and daniel can’t look at him. he can’t see any of the things he thinks he would put a name to in his expression. he _can’t_. “why don’t you go and get a drink of water? take a break. you’ve been working hard.”

it’s not an order.

“yes, sir,” daniel says anyway, and slips out.


	3. Chapter 3

**iii  
**

* * *

**"It taunts me**   
**like the muzzle of a gun;**   
**it sinks into my soul like chilled honey..." - Selima Hill, 'Desire's a Desire", _Staying Alive_**

* * *

maybe it isn’t strictly kepler’s _fault_ that they wound up busy on the twenty-fourth, maybe it wasn’t fully his decision, but it doesn’t stop the pit that daniel's grown so familiar with from opening up deep inside his chest, his ribcage hollowed out and replaced solely by emptiness. his chest becomes a void of despair and desperation and it is so, so hard to hide it from kepler. it’s easy, it’s been easy every other year, but kepler knows him now, knows his tells and his subconscious admissions of his emotions, but it’s still easier to hide them than lie.

so he won’t lie - it bothers him that kepler doesn’t even acknowledge the day. because surely he must know, unless he’s forgotten, unless the details of daniel’s life are so unimportant that kepler wouldn’t even deign to remember the one day that matters. it’s not even as though daniel’s begging him to remember his _birthday_ , he has no expectations, just… an offhand comment. a mention of the fact it’s been three-hundred-and-sixty-five days, that kepler dragged him up from the spiralling pit of depression daniel had sunk himself into and shaped him back into something almost human.

daniel does what he does best. sinks into venom, lets vitriol and hate wash over him. he lets himself be _bitter_ about it and kepler must notice, but he barely acknowledges it until daniel refuses to play along with his favourite, _stupid_ , pastime.

“that is kind of special,” kepler allows, staring out at the darkened apartment building in front of them. the silence drags on for a moment, but daniel knows him, daniel knows that he’s just waiting for a bite. for a comment, an interruption, and he won’t give him the pleasure this time. “that is kind of special,” he repeats, a little quieter, before he picks his voice up again. “we should do something to celebrate, don’t you think?”

_you bastard_ , daniel thinks, and closes his eyes as he leans his head back against the cool leather of the seat. “y’know,” he says, fighting to keep his voice steady, “if you say ‘we should sit perfectly still and silent in this car for another six hours’, i swear to god that i’ll -”

“why,” kepler interrupts, and his voice sounds like he’s trying not to laugh at what they both know would end up being nothing but an empty threat, “don’t you check the backseat?”

“is there a body in the backseat?”

“well, there’s a duffel bag.”

that doesn’t mean there isn’t a body, daniel wants to say, but he twists and contorts himself to drag it closer and open the zipper anyway, before he stops dead when his brain manages to catch up and explain what he’s seeing.

“uh,” he says.  
  
“yes?”

“there’s, uh, there’s about… fifty pounds of fireworks back here,” daniel breathes.

kepler nods, slow, eyes still fixed on entirely blacked-out windows. it’s too dark to tell what his face is doing and it’s a bad angle for it, too, with daniel half-turned around the way he is, but he’d swear, he’d swear there’s the barest ghost of a smile. “yeah,” kepler eventually says, “yeah, i thought there might be.”

“why?”

“i thought you could set ‘em off,” kepler says. “do you want to?”

“i - but what about the stalk- the vetting?”

“honestly, we did that yesterday. they aren’t even home right now.”

oh, that motherfucker.

“you pranked me,” daniel breathes and he can’t fucking _believe_ this. “you _pranked_ me.”

“hey, rule number eight, no complaining.”

“no, hey, no, i’m not - i’m not complaining,” daniel says, because he isn’t - he’s beaming. “i’m not complaining. let’s go.”

“atta boy,” kepler says, finally letting himself grin. 

* * *

it’s nine pm, almost, and there’s a chill in the air - the earlier rain’s left the world around them both cold enough that daniel pulls his jacket a little closer around himself as he bends over to inspect the last firework he’s put down while kepler leans against the hood of the car with his own hands deep in his pockets. his eyes are fixed on the other man, following every movement of daniel’s darker silhouette against the already-dark world, barely illuminated by a distant streetlamp.

“okay,” daniel says, straightening up and surveying the area. “yeah, i think that’s good. you ready?”

kepler nods. he has, honestly, no idea where daniel’s put half of the fireworks, but he’s sure he’ll like it anyway. daniel’s always good at putting on a show.

what a show it is - the sky, illuminated by colours, the smell of gunpowder thick on the wind and sinking into their clothes and exposed skin, their hair, smoke streaking against the dark. it’s beautiful.

it only takes a few moments for kepler’s focus to slip, his eyes fixed instead on daniel with his face turned up to the sky, bright reds and yellows reflected in his irises and casting his face in shadow differently with every new explosion. it’s daniel in his element, daniel completely at home, and it’s a sight kepler doesn’t truly think he’ll ever get tired of. he looks at peace - a stark contrast to the cacophony filling the sky above them.

“do i have mud on my face or something?” daniel asks eventually and kepler manages to conceal how startled he is by the sudden words, but it’s a close thing. “you’ve been staring at me since the start.”

“you just look happy,” kepler says. it’s quiet, and it’s honest. it’s an admission if daniel were to look deep enough, and he does.

“oh,” daniel says in reply as he turns to face kepler fully. kepler blinks, slow, and watches another flash of blue in jacobi’s eye. the dark colour of it provides a nice backdrop, he notes idly, distantly, as he becomes suddenly and sharply aware of a pressure against his forearm.

a hand. daniel’s hand, specifically, pulling his own out of the pocket it’s been buried in and interlacing their fingers.

it feels almost too delicate to be allowed, too much, too gentle and sweet and kind for the type of person that the two of them are. it’s a simple touch that shouldn’t leave kepler’s breath caught in his throat and a flush threatening to overtake his face, but maybe it’s just been too long since anyone bothered to touch him at all. his hand is steady, a worker’s hand. through a haze, kepler wonders how long it would take to map out all of the calluses that have made their home on his palm.

“can i?” he asks.

“mmh,” kepler gets out. he’s still staring at their linked hands, for a while, until he eventually looks up and into a warm gaze with his own that turns to one of surprise as soon as their eyes meet.

jacobi laughs, and leans in.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is the first chapter w any real violence in it, so i'm putting this here as a warning. if you'd prefer to skip, all that happens of note is the implication that sharing a bed on missions becomes the norm after this point (somewhere fairly soon after the miniep 'no complaints')

**iv**

* * *

**"She buckled into the death,  
** **I whimpered  
** **easy easy now  
** **no one has to get hurt."**

**\- Shivanee Ramochlan, 'the night i fucked the border patrol agent'**

* * *

somewhere along the way he lost track of the train of events that led to this, to them sharing each other’s space in such a way.

the contact, the closeness, isn’t unfamiliar. they’re comfortable around each other, for some reason, despite the voice deep in jacobi’s mind he so frequently decides to ignore that tells him just how _dangerous_ kepler is. it lists off the ways he’s seen the man kill someone, how he looks with blood staining his clothes and hands, how he hardly even flinches from the recoil of a gun. it tells him all this and still jacobi trusts him with his life, gives that over to him, allows the man to be behind him without any real fear of harm - he lets himself be touched, even, although they are infrequent and chaste, nothing more than a hand on his shoulder or arm, the brush of shoulders or on one particularly memorable occasion, kepler’s head sinking down to rest on jacobi’s shoulder as he slept.

this is new, though.

a booking made hastily in a tourist-trap town at the height of summer - the receptionist said, cheerfully, that they were so _lucky_ to have come at a time where a room was available, although it’s a little small, and jacobi’s twisted ankle had been screaming at him to the point where he was considering passing out there before the desk until kepler had smoothly cut her off and said they’d take it.

“small,” he’d scoffed as they slowly made their way upstairs, kepler taking the rear ostensibly so he could make sure there was nobody following them, more likely so that he could ensure jacobi didn’t fall and fuck himself up more. “what does she know? i used to live in a studio apartment.”

“those can be nice,” jacobi mumbled. “i've seen loads of cool ones on twitter.”

“i can assure you that this one wasn’t,” kepler says, dryly amused as they reach the room. 

they could have pulled out the couch and made that into the second, smaller, bed the room boasted of course, but jacobi had all but collapsed onto the double bed and the air conditioning had left the room too cold for kepler to willingly stay out of bed any longer than he really had to, so. 

he takes another breath and then jacobi finally closes his eyes, kepler’s breathing steady where his face rests against his bare chest. he doesn’t quite snore, just the occasional breath that’s _more_ than the others and sometimes there’s a soft murmur that might be words and may just be meaningless syllables. if he were a braver man, jacobi thinks he might run his fingers through kepler’s hair while he sleeps, pull him a little closer and leech the body heat from him that he seems to have such an overabundance of.

they wake up to the morning sunlight through the blinds in each other’s arms anyway.

* * *

there is a knife held to a man’s throat while jacobi perches on the edge of a table and watches the scene with a sort of dull and far-off interest in the proceedings, his legs swinging a little. the man’s eyes are wide and half-wild, panicky and darting all around, landing anywhere except the face of the one holding the knife and ever-so-slightly pressing the edge of it into the skin across his adam’s apple. kepler seems unfazed by the proximity to danger, staying almost perfectly still, face expressionless and largely unreadable to anyone that doesn’t know him well.

jacobi does. he doesn’t need to look him in the eye to see that, though - he knows that kepler loves the game, the thrill of the hunt, predator pit against prey. in times like this, on missions, when they’re busy doing the dirty work, the gentler edges of kepler wear away to something razor-sharp and immovable, everything slipping away to make way for the stone-hearted man before him. this kepler is a killer, is remorseless and unfeeling.

it is tragically one of the most incredible things jacobi’s watched for a long time, the easy way kepler can slip into an entirely different persona as though it were nothing more than a different suit. his acting is impeccable.

there should really be more to criticise, but jacobi just finds the way a man can so easily shed his skin and shift into something else entirely absolutely fascinating and he’s happy to have the chance to watch him at work. the man is vicious, toying with his prey, as though life is nothing beyond a game - a gamble. the devil came up to the surface and his name is four syllables, twelve letters, his human guise is handsome and charming and a man of far too many interesting characteristics to ever be ignored or brushed aside.

“stop struggling,” kepler says, his voice flat. “you wouldn’t want my hand to slip, would you?”

it wouldn’t, he and jacobi both know this, but a sound that might be a whimper escapes the man’s lips anyway, eyes bright and damp with unshed tears. he mouths _please_ as though it’s going to make kepler reconsider, make him pull the knife away and let him walk away to live his life. 

if that’s what he thinks, then he’s a fool. 

kepler wipes off the knife on his already-stained sleeve when he’s done, adding to the mess that’s seeping into the cotton. jacobi watches in silence as he does, the way he spins it in his hand after he cleans it, catching the light on it.

“did you enjoy yourself?” kepler asks, tilting his head a little to the side even as he doesn’t look up to jacobi’s face.

“don't i always,” jacobi replies.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> more violent references, more references to bar fights and drinking, etc, in this one.

**v**

* * *

**"Hunched in the bath, four ibuprofen gulped  
** **too late to dull the muscle cramping  
** **to sate a god who thirsts  
** **monthly for his slake of iron,  
** **I am just a body bleeding in bad light."  
** ****\- V. Penelope Pelizzon, 'Blood Memory** **

* * *

there’s a clatter from the kitchen that rouses jacobi from the half-awake stupor he’s found himself in with a start - phone pressed against his face from where he’d rolled onto it, the lines embedded into his cheek as he swings his legs round and slowly makes his way to the door and through the hallway until, finally, he can see into the room.

“oh jesus, fuck,” he breathes when he gets a good look at the situation, of kepler slumped over at the dining table with bruises circling his throat and across the bridge of his nose in the threat of a break. “how the hell did you even get into my house? i definitely didn’t give you a spare key. i’m not even sure that i have a spare key.”

kepler coughs in response, or maybe it’s an attempt to laugh. it sounds rough and scratchy, to be expected, but he doesn’t bother lifting his head to grace jacobi with a glare, instead just curling his hands into fists for a moment before flipping him off.

 _you and your fucking fights,_ jacobi thinks, and passes him a glass of water. kepler finally sits up to drink it, wincing with every swallow - again, expected, and jacobi watches with a detached and distant interest as the fingerprints around his throat shift. looks like someone tried a lot harder than usual to do lasting damage.

“why’d you get in a fight this time?”

“because men in bars,” kepler says lowly, grim, “are pieces of shit. that’s why.”

it’s a more genuine answer than jacobi’s got out of him on nights like this before, which is a surprise he acknowledges somewhere in his mind, but only serves in the moment as a prompt to tilt his head a little to one side. he’s never really thought of kepler as a person to do things for someone besides himself. “hey. did someone tell you your car looks like something a drunk ceo would buy?”

“i _walked_ there,” kepler protests, “no. just saw something that wouldn’t fucking stand.”

(it’s funny how similar kepler and maxwell are, jacobi will think later. both of them swear more when they’re really upset by something - or, if not upset, disturbed. somewhere along those lines. it’s a similarity that will make him smile to himself, that will amuse him to no end as he thinks about how they both try to be so unlike others.)

“okay,” he says slowly, “okay. but why did you come here? why didn’t you go home?”

“i don’t know,” kepler says. “don’t ask me questions like that, jacobi, you know i don’t have an answer for you. you know that i’m not going to tell you something.”

“still worth a try,” jacobi says with a shrug. silently, kepler stares at him at least for a few moments before he drops his gaze down, looking towards the floor. as jacobi takes a deep breath he can smell - alcohol, of some description, which at least lends credibility to kepler’s insistence that he didn’t just beat someone up in the street and explains why swearing seems to come more naturally to him when he’d normally make a point not to. “you’ve been drinking?”

“oh jesus,” kepler says, leaning back to run a hand through his hair, brushing it out of his face, “what the hell does that matter?”

it doesn’t, jacobi figures, but it makes sense that he has been. 

“it doesn’t,” jacobi says quietly, scratching his cheek. “guest rooms made up, if you’re staying.”

it’s overtiredness, the fact he’s barely awake or a trick of the light, or just a total _delusion_ of his that makes him think kepler looks almost a little disappointed by his words. the guest room is fine - a comfortable enough bed, plain curtains, clean towels in the top drawer of the dresser and it’s not like it’s got some thin layer of filth on anything in it, or that there’s anything particularly untoward or fucked-up that’s happened in there. it’s a nice room and it’s not fair that a millisecond can make him second-guess giving it to someone who broke into his house in the first place.

“thanks,” kepler says, and the flicker of emotion is forgotten.

jacobi watches him leave, how he lingers in the doorway of the spare room for a second almost as though he wants to look back, to say something over his shoulder, but then his hand drops from the frame and he lets the door close behind him. for a moment jacobi stares at the now-closed door before he gets to his feet, tucking the chair’s under the table and wiping off the droplets of blood that have clearly escaped kepler’s split knuckles.

he hadn’t really noticed those, too distracted by the bruising. maybe he can blame it on still being half-asleep.

with a sigh he goes to the bathroom, gets the wipes and band-aids, the bandages, shoves them into his pocket before he gets a glass of water, walking to knock on the door.

“you’re not asleep yet, are you,” he says softly. maybe he should have phrased it as a question instead of stating it as though it were fact, but he knows kepler. he knows him. there is, unsurprisingly, no verbal reply, instead opening the door to stare at him, still dressed, bed still fully made-up.

“what?”

“brought you some more water,” he shrugs, “and some stuff for your hands. didn’t realise they were all fucked up too, i didn’t really look.”

“ah. just leave it, i can deal with them.”

jacobi rolls his eyes and closes the door behind him, flicking on the light as he walks to take a seat on the bed, setting down the glass on the bedside table and patting the spot next to him. kepler’s eyes flick between jacobi himself and the spot indicated beside him on the bed, the slight dip in the covers. jacobi, in turn, stares at the marks he can see, the ones that aren’t covered by clothes.

“fine,” kepler finally acquiesces, sitting and letting jacobi pull his hands into his lap, clicking his tongue as he looks at them. “they’re not that bad.”

“shut up.”

“ _i_ _nsubordination_ ,” kepler hisses. 

“shut up.”

he gives in - lets jacobi take his hands, lets him clean them up, eye them up, lets him fuss and tut a little as he cleans a few tiny pieces of grit out of them, ignores the way kepler’s gritting his teeth and letting out hisses at the sting of antiseptic.

“you should really go for a shower,” jacobi says as he considers them, bandages in one hand with kepler’s hand resting in the other. “i could lend you clothes, i have sweatpants and shit that’ll fit.”

it’s kinder than outright saying he can feel something sticky on the inside of kepler’s wrists and up his arm, than saying the man smells like a combination of blood-sweat-alcohol-cologne and that it’s deeply, inescapably intoxicating. telling him to shower is easier than admitting any of that.

kepler hums, considering, seemingly less prone to snapping at jacobi than he had been only mere moments ago. he doesn’t move away, he lets the closeness remain, the unmentioned intimacy lingering and undeniably present between them. “if i do, will you join me?”

“ _kepler_.”

“kidding.”

he wonders how true that really is. jacobi smiles, a little, lifts kepler’s hand to his mouth to press his lips gently against the back of it. they’re together, soft and quick, barely even enough to count as a kiss but he hears the sharp intake of breath from the man beside him, can feel the way that he tenses just a little.

“i’m kissing it better,” jacobi says, and doesn’t look up to meet kepler’s eyes.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a bit more violence in this one that's a bit more explicit than it has been so far - if skipped, it's the third and final section in this chapter, and it's kepler getting injured and then jacobi and maxwell discussing it (and how human bodies are kind of gross sometimes)

**vi**

* * *

**"You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it hold  
its nose to the grindstone and hunt with the hounds."  
\- Paul Muldoon, 'Symposium', _Being Alive_**

* * *

sometimes it strikes jacobi that kepler’s voice could be nice to hear when sitting around a campfire, with the fire crackling under his words, shadows cast in gold and furious red. he looks as though he’d be right at home in the woods, throwing a log into the fire and letting them burn down low.

the man isn’t even talking and the thought has no reason to have come into being. this is something he’s thinking about late at night with kepler in bed beside him, the thinly-veiled excuses already forced out for jacobi to convince himself that there’s a good enough reason to want to share kepler’s body heat, his space. there had been no moment of hesitation there on kepler’s part, just a silent head tilt in acknowledgement before he’d asked “do you want to be closest to the window?”

he had, actually.

for now, while they’re awake, he’ll keep up the pretence that he hadn’t planned to wake up with his face pressed into the back of kepler’s neck and just lay side-by-side. it’s enough.

kepler, though - kepler shifts, props himself up on one elbow and squints at jacobi in the dim room. he can almost imagine a slight frown on his face. it feels like he’s being studied, analysed and taken apart by kepler’s gaze, somehow.

“what.”

kepler shakes his head, lowering himself back down into a new position, pressing the side of his face against jacobi’s bare chest. almost automatically, unwillingly, one of his hands goes to kepler’s hair, runs through it slowly, feels the way he hums against his skin, can imagine the brush of his eyelashes. his nails scratch against kepler’s head, a little, earns another soft hum for it.

“how do you feel about camping,” jacobi says, because this feels too close, too intimate, suddenly. “you like it? tents and shit. campfires.”

“i never told you ‘bout how i was in boy scouts?” kepler says, laughing a little when jacobi badly-muffles his groan. “used to go camping pretty much every weekend, good way to get out the house. backpacks full of kit, tents, matches and tinned food, cookin’ over an open fire, all that. there was this other kid, couple of them, actually, used to try and get me to tell them ghost stories while they were makin’ smores.”

what jacobi gets from that is, he was right.

he waits for kepler to continue, but he’s met only with silence - he frowns, taps his fingers against his temple for a second. “is that it?”

“hm?”

“that isn’t going to turn into a real story?”

“oh. no. nothing else to say, really.”

“ _nothing?”_

“not everything has to be a story,” kepler says.

“they do with you,” jacobi points out.

kepler laughs. it doesn’t sound genuine. they don’t talk again until morning, but kepler still falls asleep with his head on jacobi’s chest.

* * *

“i,” kepler declares as he leans back in the chair he’s dragged over to where jacobi’s set himself up to work today, “am going away for a couple of days.”

“woah,” jacobi says dryly. “it’s your summer vacay.”

“no.”

“go get a nice tan.”

“no.”

they slip into silence for a moment - jacobi still writing, focused entirely on the notebook he’s propped up against the base of his laptop while kepler sits calmly, tapping one finger against his leg as he watches jacobi. “aren’t you going to actually ask why?”

jacobi frowns. “i mean, no. you’ll tell me, or you won’t.”

“i’m meeting with a new specialist,” he says. “i’m hoping that we’re going to be getting a third member to our little group.”

this is surprising - as long as jacobi’s known kepler it’s only been the two of them, except for the first two weeks where there had been a partner until something had happened to them that jacobi had tried to entirely block out from his thoughts. the idea of a third person joining them, ruining their carefully-constructed dynamic, tilting the scales and tearing apart the balance they’ve constructed. it’s not something that he wants at all.

“oh,” he says. “oh, okay.”

she grows on him quickly. if he were to be rude, he’d say it was like a rash, but the truth is that maxwell quickly becomes family, his best friend, and he doesn’t know that he could cope without her.

* * *

it’s an idle thought that should never have come to the forefront of his mind anyway, but it amazes jacobi how much blood the human body can hold. it’s remarkable how much it takes to give someone the flush of life, to keep them moving, their heart beating and lungs expanding, to keep everything from stiffening and rotting away.

still.

here he is, emergency surgery on-field, maxwell holding a torch above and angled so he can see exactly where his hands are, how thick the sheen of deep, almost-black liquid is that coats them. how fucking _jagged_ the edges of the hole in kepler’s stomach are as he tries to get the sutures through when the needles slides between blood-soaked fingers.

kepler is - conscious, maybe, but only barely. he makes a weak groan every now and then which is about what counts as aware in jacobi’s book. he’d apologise, but it’s not something he feels he should apologise for when he’s the one responsible for keeping the rest of kepler’s organs inside him and in their rightful place.

“this is why i didn’t become an actual fucking doctor,” maxwell mumbles and jacobi laughs, bitterly, because he gets exactly what she means. “god, that’s so gross.”

“sh,” kepler grunts, which was probably supposed to be “shut up”. it’s a message jacobi cheerfully relays to maxwell, who only rolls her eyes and shifts the torch a little to give him a better look at the knot he’s trying to tie.

it’s not exactly the prettiest suturing job he’s ever done, which he informs kepler with an additional comment about how it’s going to be his ugliest scar yet (kepler doesn’t reply which almost sends a jolt of cold fear down jacobi’s spine to reside deep in his own stomach but that he manages to fend off when he realises that the man’s likely just exhausted from the effort of keeping himself awake while anything happened at all). there’s smears of blood all over the three of them, and the grass, but there’s not a whole lot to be done about it.

he’ll be fine. they’ve all survived worse at this point.

maxwell still holds his hand in the goddard-approved hospital room, though, which might be as a reassurance for him that their trinity won’t be broken up so easily or for herself, as a reminder that she isn’t going to lose the new family that’s been built from the ground up around her.

“the human body,” she says quietly, the neck of her shirt pulled up to cover her chin, “is absolutely disgusting.”

“yup.”

“it’s…”

“trust me, i know. i know.”

“shit,” she mutters, “i wish i was made of fucking carbon fibre.”

maxwell, jacobi’s learned, swears a lot more when she’s upset. he can’t fault her, though, because she isn’t wrong about how generally disgusting physical bodies are, and how much easier it would be for them all to be strings of code encased in chrome and gleaming steel. sometimes it makes him huff out a soft laugh. peas in a pod.

“you can be my sister no matter if you’re flesh and bone or metal and plastic,” jacobi tells her.

“aw,” maxwell grins. “that’s probably the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“don’t get used to it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> apologies for the likely-ooc sections in this one and how its kinda obvious parts of it were written at vastly different times. updates are still gonna be ... as and when they happen sdh, there's stuff going on that takes priority outside of writing stuff. stay safe <3


	7. Chapter 7

**vii**

* * *

**"And words, little words,**   
**words too small for any hope or promise, not really soothing**   
**but soothing nonetheless."**

**\- Richard Siken, 'The Torn-Up Road', _Crush_**

* * *

there is a certain fragility to the tableau they’ve set up, as though a single nudge in the wrong direction could shatter every member and send them scattering on the floor. 

the scene is set - kepler and jacobi on either side of maxwell, their chairs pressed as close to one another as they can be; marcus cutter, rachel young and david clarke opposite, with cutter in the position that maxwell’s taken. a deliberate and carefully-calculated move that jacobi could possibly bring himself to admire if it weren’t so obviously for the sole purpose of getting maxwell nervous and on-edge. there’s something in the set of kepler’s jaw that tells him _he_ knows exactly what cutter’s doing, too. 

cutter is impossible to ignore, even with his inane and curated small talk that he makes use of to manipulate the unsuspecting into being more comfortable around him than anyone should ever be. 

(“never trust him,” kepler had told the two of them, his eyes flicking between both of theirs, holding their gaze each time. “do you understand? do _not_ trust him.”

his breath smelt of whiskey after a glass too many downstairs - the shot of vodka jacobi has poured into it, encouraged by maxwell’s snickering, may have had something to do with that. 

it would have been so easy to ask _why_ and jacobi had been so very tempted, but there was an irregular desperation in kepler’s eyes, something raw and honest. _what had cutter done to him,_ he’d chosen to wonder instead even as he nodded, slowly blinking as kepler looks back to him.

“okay,” he’d said, and dropped the matter entirely. he hadn’t known what they were talking about, when maxwell brought it up over coffee the next morning, catching him off-guard as he’d been stirring in a sugar packet.)

cutter’s smile is disconcerting and jacobi watches maxwell’s face tighten out of the corner of his eye when cutter finally directs a real question her way. he’d known this insisted-upon meal would come, cutter’s insistence on meeting the people kepler _hand-chose_ one to be refused on pain of death. they just had to survive one dinner. 

maxwell sat down on the kerb as soon as the car cutter had climbed into was fully out of sight, pressing her hands to her face and curling up into herself as much as she can. _“fuck,”_ she groans, muffled by the way she’s hidden herself. “i hate him.”

“mm,” kepler says, patting his left pocket and pulling a cigarette and a lighter out, holding it in his teeth and forming a barrier with the hand not holding the lighter as he’d brought the flame to life. “he’s slimy.”

jacobi hasn’t seen kepler smoke since the incident in peru, when they’d had to take another agent along with them and they had, unfortunately, met a very unfortunate fate in the most unfortunate way. it had been messy, jacobi remembers. human bodies aren’t quite as sturdy as they should be, especially in their line of work - or maybe they weren’t designed to be quite so close to explosives. kepler had taken one look at the carnage, sworn in a language jacobi would guess at being european, before turning around and offering jacobi a cigarette. 

“he’s trying to make himself feel so much more powerful than he actually is, and he’s trying to - i don’t know, instil that fear of himself in people,” maxwell says, lifting her head up to glare at the cement. “why do men do that? that’s some fucking - fragile masculinity _bullshit,_ is what it is.”

jacobi huffs, but kepler just inclines his head. “men suck,” he agrees. 

“you are a man,” jacobi says, maybe a little redundantly, since he’s just stating a fact.

“sometimes,” kepler says, cheerful. which, well, _what,_ but jacobi doesn’t have a chance to ask. “he’s - he is a powerful man, cutter. he wouldn’t act like that if he didn’t have the power behind him to back it up.”

“i’m not scared of him,” maxwell says. it’s a lie, all three of them know it, but none bother to call her out on it. kepler tilts his head up to the sky, blows the smoke out of his mouth and watches it until it disappears before he speaks again. 

“i am.”

* * *

  
“the hell did you mean, _sometimes?”_ jacobi half-yells, standing in the hallway of kepler’s apartment with the door still open behind him. “the - what? _what?”_

“good evening, jacobi,” kepler says. “it’s nice to see you, jacobi. i’ve had a lovely day, how nice of you to ask. please. close. the. door. mr. jacobi.”

the sharpness of the monosyllabic words earns a wince from jacobi as he goes to do just that, his own surname in that harsh voice making him even more riled up and as though something’s tight in his chest. he waits to hear the final click before he turns around again, mouth already open to shout before he realises kepler’s vanished. 

“if you could _not_ run off and hide in the kitchen when i’m trying to talk to you,” he says when he finds him. kepler raises an eyebrow at him, his back resting against the countertop as he takes a drink from the glass of what jacobi’s fairly sure is just water in his hand. 

“i didn’t run,” kepler says, and jacobi could honestly punch him. “honestly, jacobi, i think you’re overreacting. it’s not as though it changes anything.”

“i - it _does,_ though,” jacobi says, or exclaims, or shouts. he can’t tell if his voice is raised anymore. he isn’t sure it matters. “i should have known, you should’ve said - i thought that you _trusted_ me, kepler. this matters.”

“no,” kepler says, pushing off of the counter as he puts the glass down atop it, “it doesn’t, and i’ll thank you to not try and tell me what’s important to _me_ about myself. is that clear, mr jacobi, or do i need to use smaller words so you can fully comprehend them?”

at some point, he’d come closer, backed jacobi up against the wall. jacobi has an inch or two on him, they both know, but the dark look in his eyes and the cold anger in his face still make him intimidating and anyone that wasn’t jacobi would likely quiver and apologise for their insolence when faced with it. 

jacobi kisses him. 

it’s harsh and a far cry from the usual gentle, overly-soft moments they claw from their schedules to have with each other - this is biting, jacobi’s fingers tight in kepler’s hair where he’d dragged him closer, teeth sharp against his bottom lip asking for, no, _demanding_ that kepler let him take the lead. kepler’s own hands eventually settled with one at jacobi’s waist and the other at the back of his head. there’s a clear moment when he does give in, let jacobi have control of their kiss, evident in the loosening of his body and the way he almost seems to melt into it, even when he’s still the one pinning jacobi to the wall. 

kepler’s panting when they break apart, his face darker than jacobi’s seen it before after just a kiss, and he’s meeting jacobi’s eyes as though searching for something. silently jacobi counts down from five before he shifts and turns them over, reverses their positions. kepler’s eyes widen at the feeling of the wall against his back even through his clothes, still searching for _something_ in jacobi’s. 

“what,” jacobi says, “you like me being the big spoon in bed but not bossy, huh? thought you _liked_ it when i tell you what to do.”

“i l- i like it,” kepler says, clearing his throat. “i want - i want. this. you.”

“oh good,” jacobi says. the earlier words and tempers aren’t gone, not in the least, and something burns in his chest as he pulls kepler down into another kiss, biting down on his bottom lip hard and hearing an undignified, unintentional noise that’s quickly swallowed up when kepler kisses back. 

“bedroom,” kepler pants against his neck after they break apart again in search of air. _“bedroom.”_

“of course, warren,” jacobi grins, and pretends he doesn’t notice kepler shiver.


	8. Chapter 8

**viii**

* * *

**"Back when I was nearly blameless and could visit the zoo  
** **and admire the tigers not for what they actually were,  
** **but as monstrous man-eaters that deserved to be caught."**

**\- Kristen Tracy, 'Stamps'**

* * *

in a way that isn’t all that unusual when considering everything, jacobi wakes up to warmth beside him and a definite presence where there would usually be an empty space. he wakes up to the feeling of someone pressed against his chest and their legs tangled with his beneath the sheets. it only takes a moment for his brain to fully catch up and register everything happening, to put the puzzle pieces fully together as the memories come to the forefront of his mind. the bed, evident by the only-just-nicer sheets than he has on his own, belongs to kepler and that means, then, that it’s _kepler_ pressed against him, skin bare and still deeply asleep.

“oh my god,” jacobi breathes and presses his face against the top of kepler’s head, inhales. kepler’s hair smells like apples with the undertone of something more artificial and what jacobi would have expected that he thinks is the few notes of the cologne still lingering. 

he’s quick to lose track of how long they spend there, how long it is of him trying to properly manage the feeling of kepler against him before the man stirs, groaning and eventually lifting his head to stare at jacobi with bleary eyes and a furrowed brow as he badly stifles a yawn.

“morning,” jacobi says, calmer now than he had been upon first waking up and more comfortable, his grin coming easily to his lips as kepler stares at him. “thought that you’d be asleep forever.”

“jacobi?”

“the one and only, yeah.”

“and we’re - oh my god,” kepler says. “oh, my god.”

“no, just jacobi,” he replies, still grinning as kepler glares at him with barely any amount of his usual venom, more as though it’s a habit than anything else. “oh come on, it was right there, i had to make the joke. i’m kidding.”

kepler blinks, slow, before he tilts his head to one side. “you know, i think there was a bet going on whether or not we’d done this, yet.”

“oh shit,” jacobi says, “you’re definitely right. maxwell told me about it a while back.”

“i think she won, actually,” comes the reply, thoughtful. “everyone else was _convinced,_ as far as i remember, that we already had. she’s the only one that deserves to win anyway.”

“do i detect some favoritism there, kepler?”

kepler snorts and finally lets himself lay back down, staring up at his ceiling with one arm folded underneath his head. jacobi watches him for a few moments, the way kepler seems to be squinting up at the ceiling before something clicks and he can’t quite manage to hold down the laugh.

“what’s so funny?” kepler asks.

“you need glasses, don’t you?”

stiffness. “no.”

“you _do!”_

kepler goes silent again and rolls over onto his side to stare at the wall instead of anywhere jacobi could conceivably see his expression, which only serves to make jacobi laugh even harder at how actions _really do_ speak louder than words.

“i can’t believe this,” he says - ostensibly to himself although they both know that the truth is that he’s searching for a response. “this whole time i thought i was the only one with bad eyes and you’ve actually just been lying to all of us. i don’t know if i can take this, kepler, my heart is breaking apart in my chest right this second at how much you’ve been lying to me. do you wear contacts? do you have reading glasses or something, have you got-”

“shut up,” kepler says.

* * *

there’s never been any sort of monumental shift in their relationship, the three of them, there’s only ever been gradual developments up to the dynamics that they have. maybe those weren’t quite so gradual as they could be, maybe they all slipped into something comfortable all-too-easily, considering who they are as people. maybe the understandings of each other that they all reached were things that weren’t meant to be easily understood or quantified.

“your life sounds like it was kinda shit,” maxwell offers one night, tipping the half-empty can of red bull in jacobi’s direction as she looks up from the screen to meet his eyes across kepler’s dining table (now taken over with sheets of loose paper, extension cords and chargers for various devices, as well as a distinct scattering of pens and highlighters, long since merged into a single conglomerate the two of them are picking from at random). “i mean, it sounds like it was a whole lot.”

“so does yours,” jacobi points out without bothering to look up for more than a cursory glance in her direction. they don’t need to make eye contact when they talk, far more in-tune with the other than they perhaps should be. “maybe that’s a sign we were destined to be family. shitty childhoods.”

“i’m the little sister you never wanted.”

kepler, banished to the couch while they work on whatever projects really need to be finished up, snorts a little as he audibly shifts on it, a quiet _shit_ escaping under his breath accompanied by the familiar sound of a phone being dropped on the floor.

“did you drop your phone?”

“no.” kepler sounds a little indignant even at the implication that he would do something like that and sits up to either shoot a glare at the two of them or protest aloud, turning so he’s leaning over the back of the couch, arms holding himself up on the leather. “are you going to be sitting up all night doing - what _are_ you actually doing?”

“work,” maxwell says a little smugly. “well, i am. jacobi’s probably looking at reddit, or something.”

jacobi squawks, something sounding distinctly like ‘i don’t use reddit!’ making its way through his spluttering while maxwell and kepler both share a look, and a badly-hidden laugh at his expense.

“screw you guys,” jacobi eventually mutters. the laughter doesn’t stop. “i don’t want to be part of this team anymore if you’re gonna keep bullying me.”

* * *

they are the same they’ve always been even with the slight shift in the dynamic of jacobi-and-kepler. the big picture, the trinity, jacobi-and-kepler-and-maxwell was still just as it always had been, dysfunctional and family and a team. jacobi thinks about it one night with his legs swung over the couch to have his feet resting in maxwell’s lap, kepler in the kitchen after bemoaning maxwell’s lack of any _good_ food and trying to force her college-student-esque pantry into a kind of decent meal.

“you ever been to space?” jacobi asks, breaking the silence they’d fallen into. “i mean, mostly kepler, i’m gonna assume you haven’t.”

“i was actually on the moon last night,” maxwell says, “and it’s kind of hurtful you think i’ve not been to space. how dare you? my friends up there think you’re a total dick.”

“you’d definitely have brought me back moon cheese if you’d been there,” jacobi says.   
  
“shit, you definitely believed the moon was made of cheese when you were a kid, didn’t you?” she asks, right as kepler walks back into the room and leaving him to just stand silently and stare at the two of them. “i bet you wanted to eat the moon.”

“didn’t everyone?” jacobi asks with a grin, just to watch kepler’s face grow even more horrified as he stands stock-still and watch their conversation from the outside. “just wanted to reach out and bite right into it, yeah, take bits of it to feed the mice in the walls.”

“the _mice?”_ kepler asks, eyes wide and clearly unable to stay silent any longer at that one. “you had mice living in your walls?”

“no,” jacobi says, “i used to imagine we did, like that bit in cinderella where they come and help her make her dress.”

“jesus christ,” maxwell says.

“huh,” kepler says.

“not all of us could live in a mansion growing up, kepler,” jacobi says, mostly mock-offended but some part of him does ache a little at the sense of judgement, of someone knowing his family _had_ been hard off and that he’d had to work his ass off through school and college to get to where he is. kepler frowns, crossing his arms.

“maxwell was the richest of us all as a kid,” he says, “i grew up in a chicago apartment.”

“you’re from illinois?”

“i’m sure i’ve mentioned it several times.”

“kepler, i don’t have a metric for which parts of your crazy stories are total bullshit and which are actual honesty and i don’t think i ever will.”

it almost looks as though kepler’s a little hurt by that, jacobi thinks, distracted by maxwell digging her nail into the bottom of his foot, over his sock, earning a yelp as he pulls his legs off of her lap and glares at her.

_kepler needs a seat,_ she doesn’t say.

“your feet smell,” she does, as she shifts over so kepler can take a seat on the couch.

* * *

they hadn’t meant it to get quite so heated, but the knock at the door takes them both by surprise, kepler looking up at jacobi with wide eyes from where he’s boxed in with his back against the edge of his desk, moments away from being in a place to do whatever jacobi would direct him to.

“who is it?” kepler calls, his voice surprisingly steady.

“it’s maxwell,” maxwell says. “neither of you have your dick out, right?”

kepler and jacobi stare at each other. jacobi’s eyes slide to the lipstick smeared outside its boundaries, a stain on kepler’s otherwise clear skin, the flush on his cheeks and the undone buttons at his collar. the crease marks where jacobi had been holding onto his shirt as he’d kissed him breathless.

“we’re decent,” jacobi decides, and maxwell pushes the door open without another pause, grimacing only once at the way the two of them are still standing, as pressed against each other as they reasonably could be. “hey there.”

“you’re gross, you don’t know whose office this was before kepler’s,” she says. “i did some of that practice coding stuff you wanted for the work with census units, colonel, and i streamlined a little bit of it to make things a little easier for them - i wanted to know if there was anything more pressing to work on or whether i should keep finding small ways to make adjustment and slowly add the suggestibility you mentioned a while back, after the first briefing.”

kepler closes his eyes for a moment, thinking. “keep working on that,” he decides, one hand leaving its white-knuckle grip on the edge of the desk to rest on jacobi’s instead. “the cleaner those are the better in the long run, i think.”

“good point,” maxwell says. “making sure they’re subtle but that it won’t detract from them doing their job?”

“exactly.”

“got it,” she says, dropping a file onto the corner of kepler’s desk before shifting her weight and frowning. “you know, you two should try being a little more subtle.”

“we’re plenty subtle,” jacobi argues, even though they all know it’s a lie. “barely anyone thinks we’re sleeping together.”

“plenty of people,” maxwell says. “especially me. i think i’m traumatised by it, actually, i’ll never look at a man and want to fuck him again.”

“you’re _gay,”_ jacobi groans. “can you fuck off?”

“so you can make the most of the last month and a bit on earth? yeah, sure,” maxwell laughs, back at the door with a loose hold on the handle. “don’t forget about the sixteen-hundred debrief with unit three though, ‘kay? i don’t want to deal with those assholes alone.”

“i wish they’d get fired,” kepler mutters, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “i really do. i’ll see you there.”

sometimes he regrets syncing their calendars. on the one hand, none of them have ever missed a prior engagement and on the other… he really wants to miss things, sometimes.

jacobi waits for the tell-tale sound of the door fully closing behind maxwell before he pulls kepler in close for another kiss, pushing him back into his position leaning against the desk. it restricts where he can move quite efficiently, they’ve found, and jacobi hears kepler gasp before he bites down on his lip all while jacobi bites down on the newly-exposed skin of his throat.

“we need to go to that,” kepler breathes, voice soft. “it’s only in half an hour.”

“guess we’d better be quick,” jacobi says with a grin, and pushes down on kepler’s shoulders.


	9. Chapter 9

**ix**

* * *

**"Wish I could say I've put**  
**those days behind me,**  
**that I never fall into**  
**the steel-weight daydream**  
**of a gun's hard lesson."**

**\- Rachel McKibbens, 'one more time, with feeling'**

* * *

there’s an idiot half-dead on the ship, and jacobi’s on his thirtieth consideration of throwing him overboard of the day.

kepler watches him with a sort of distant curiosity and a morbid fascination with the seemingly endless ways eiffel can come up with to butcher the english language. it’s unlikely he even fully understands most of the references - jacobi watches his face during a largely one-sided conversation and sees confusion plain in kepler’s expression while eiffel’s gestures get wilder and his voice louder while he explains _exactly_ what his whole point is about anakin skywalker’s whole deal. maxwell nudges jacobi with a foot and nods towards them, an amused, _can you believe this shit?_ look on her face.

“i’m impressed that kepler’s still pretending to care,” maxwell says under her breath. “i don’t even think he knows who anakin skywalker is.”

“don’t jinx it,” jacobi hisses, “he’ll come up with a story about how he was an extra in the first movie, or something.”

“maybe… maybe kepler was jar jar binks all along,” maxwell says. her voice is steady and betrays no amusement even as jacobi feels himself pale.

“get _fucked.”_

it’s the greatest entertainment show in the galaxy - an actor versus a man who seems to have no end of opinions about geek classics, the former responding largely in polite nods and the occasional question that serves only to prompt another half-hour rant about how _messed up_ it was that there wasn’t a certain scene at a specific point in the movie. kepler’s expression of mild horror and the utterly lost look in his eyes become commonplace when he’s around eiffel for any period of time, because the man seems to be determined to share every opinion about star wars that he’s ever seen written down.

“what the hell,” kepler eventually says, catching jacobi’s arm as he moves to leave the room after another team meeting with his eyes half-desperate, “is a yoda?”

* * *

the hephaestus is a shithole.

that’s putting it nicely. _politely._ it’s falling apart and looks like it’s about to shatter into a million pieces as soon as anyone touches it, which sends shudders down jacobi’s spine because the fact remains that all that separates him from death in the cold and vast expanse of space is rusting metal is one that terrifies him and makes him feel like ice down to his core. 

it isn’t that he’s scared of death. well - he is, of course he is, isn’t everyone? but it’s more the fact that he assumed it wouldn’t be because of something like this. he’d expected it to be a blaze of glory rather than suffocating and freezing simultaneously in a bleak vacuum because it’s just - it’s not a nice thing to think about. he’d always thought his death would be something exciting.

the fear that’s taken up residence in his chest isn’t something that stops him pausing when he passes the windows, though. it’s not something that stops him looking out of them in honest-to-god _wonder_ at the whole universe out there, uncharted and unknown and terrifyingly beautiful.

“space is fucking sick,” he declares to himself one day, tilting his head to the side and taking in how the cool blue of the star they circle shines on the outside of the station. the endless mirror-blue night they’ve found themselves in is something that leaves him somewhere approaching melancholic, sometimes, but it does nothing to dull the excitement that still lives somewhere deep in his mind.

“isn’t it just,” kepler comments from behind him. it takes a lot of willpower not to jump at his voice - when had he come in? - but jacobi manages, only letting out a soft _hm_ in acknowledgement that he spoke at all.

“i never really thought i’d get the chance to see it up close like this,” jacobi admits.

they’re onboard the urania. hera’s sensors haven’t fully been connected yet which leaves them in a blind spot, a brief respite where they can be a little more themselves, a little more relaxed. they don’t need to keep up the facade they’ve constructed for a little while, and the three of them - him, kepler, maxwell - are embracing these moments every chance they get. it’s nice to find a little time to still go back to being themselves.

“was this something you imagined a lot?”

it’s a little surprising but kepler sounds genuinely curious, a tone of voice jacobi’s worked hard to learn to notice over the years that they’ve been working together and it makes him think about how rarely the two of them have spoken about their lives before they graduated college without some level of dishonesty to it.. or at least, how rarely they’ve spoken about _his_ life. kepler doesn’t really share details of anything before they met unless it comes in the form of a long-winded and unnecessary story that loses the point and any real relevancy halfway through.

“i dunno,” jacobi says. “probably. didn’t everyone want to be an astronaut as a kid? explore the stars, meet aliens, walk on the moon…”

“i guess so,” kepler says. “i wanted to be a pirate. or maybe a cowboy.”

“wait, you- what?”

kepler frowns. “piracy was a valid career option for a _seven-year-old.”_

“you. a pirate.”

for a second it looks like kepler almost rolls his eyes at him but he folds his arms and just raises an eyebrow at jacobi. “are you saying you couldn’t imagine me climbing the rigging with a cutlass between my teeth? sailing out on the open sea?” he grins a little. “you can’t imagine me in one of those shirts and the boots? eyepatch.”

“i’ve actually changed my mind,” jacobi says. “it seems like the most perfectly dramatic career for you. you’ve missed your calling. maybe you should look into it when we get back.”

“i’m planning on it,” kepler says.


End file.
